EUGENE -- After the questions about the final play gone awry and the missed defensive rebounds that stung Oregon’s 70-68 loss to UCLA on Thursday evening, junior guard Joseph Young was asked a more macro question, one that hangs over the whole season: Do you believe the Ducks are an NCAA Tournament-caliber team?

“We still can be tournament team, we just need to stay focused,” said Young, who scored a game-high 25 points. “…We can't let this loss bring us down.”

It’s to be expected that Young would still see his team as worthy of March Madness, given his green-tinted glasses. But after six losses in seven games, the Ducks have a tough road to reach that goal, according to recent history.

If Oregon were to reach the NCAA Tournament it would likely be the conference’s lowest seed given the hole it has dug itself with a 2-6 league start. And in the last 10 seasons, the lowest NCAA seed from the Pac-12/10 Conference got there by averaging 10.6 wins and 7.3 losses in conference play. That means Oregon must win at least 8 of its final 10 games to get close to that historical average.

Can UO do it?

KenPom.com projects UO to win six of those games: home matchups against USC, Oregon State, Washington, Washington State, and Arizona State and on the road at USC.

UCLA guard Jordan Adams, left, is fouled on his way to the basket by Oregon forward Richard Amardi. Amardi was one of just five Ducks to score Thursday, and was the only non-guard for UO to score.The Associated Press

To beat that projection, Oregon must upset the form chart, which will be difficult considering it plays No. 1 and undefeated Arizona twice -- KenPom.com gives UO a 9 percent chance of winning in Tucson -- and second-place UCLA again in that stretch. In that scenario, it would appear games against the up-and-down Sun Devils (5-3 in Pac-12 play) will be key barometers for UO’s postseason destination.

If the Ducks can pick off a couple games from ASU, Oregon just might have a chance of either picking up steam to win the Pac-12 tournament, or provide an impressive enough resume for the NCAA Tournament selection committee to provide an at-large.

“We've got to take it one game at a time,” UO coach Dana Altman said Thursday evening after the loss to the Bruins. “ I know that's an old cliche, but we can't worry about being upper echelon, we've got to worry about USC.”

If Oregon continues the missteps that plagued the team during its 2-6 January record, however, the NIT or worse could be UO's postseason destination.

One of the negative trends that's given Oregon's slide its momentum is how often UO now allows opponents to shoot free throws. Oregon shot more free throws than its opponents in each of its first eight games but has held an advantage in just two of the 12 games since. The increase in free throws has followed a rise in fouls, with UO averaging 2.7 more fouls per game since its first loss. Opponents' 71.6 percent shooting on free throws ranks in the top quarter of the country.

"We want to be aggressive but we've got some bad fouls that we want to clean up," Altman said.

But it's also the place, not just the number, of its fouls that has hurt Oregon.

In an eight-point loss at Oregon State, Ducks forward Richard Amardi was his team's biggest spark off the bench with 11 points -- before he earned his fourth foul some 20 feet from the hoop, anyway. With 17 minutes left in the game and its best offensive big man out of the game, Altman threw up his hands in frustration from the bench.

In a similar scene Thursday against UCLA, Mike Moser picked up his second foul at least 15 feet from the hoop, and with 16 minutes remaining in the first half. He played just 14 minutes the entire game, rendered ineffective in a two-point loss.

"He got the two quick fouls and we put him back in trying to get him going in the first half and he struggled," Altman said. "We put him in the second half but he never got it going."

Fouls are but one factor in Oregon's multi-layered month to forget, however, a four-week span that's seen them fall from No. 10 in the Associated Press poll to the very edge of the NCAA Tournament's bubble.

Thursday morning, CBS' Jerry Palm published an NCAA Tournament bracket prediction that showed the then-five loss Ducks playing in the tournament's first-round play-in games in Dayton, Ohio. One day and one loss later, however, the Ducks were predicted to be one of the first four teams left out, the first time all season Palm's bracket did not include the Ducks.

Over the course of the next five weeks, Oregon will either prove it deserves to be back in or if eight wins in 10 games is just too tall a task.

Here are the overall and conference records for the Pac-12/10's lowest NCAA Tournament seeds of the last 10 seasons: